Classic TV in 1979: Your Guide to All the Shows Celebrating 40th Anniversaries This Year!

Jan 23, 2019 6:18 pm

By Ed Gross

classic-tv-1979

Climb back aboard our time machine as we take another trip into the past of television history. We’ve gone as far back as 60 years with television series debuting in 1959 (Bonanza, Dennis the Menace and The Twilight Zone among them), then traveled to 1969 and such golden oldies as Marcus Welby, M.D., The Courtship of Eddie’s Father and Scooby-Doo. Well, now it’s 1979’s turn, and we’re highlighting a total of 17 shows that premiered 40 years ago.

Such popular favorites as The Dukes of Hazzard, The Facts of Life, Hart to Hart and Knots Landing got their start then, as did shows you’ve probably never heard of (or wish you hadn’t) like McLean Stevenson’s Hello, Larry; Mrs. Columbo and Supertrain; as well as the return of TV favorites like Carol Burnett and Mary Tyler Moore.

Check out our Classic TV Podcast, bringing you conversations with the people behind your favorite shows from the past!

All told, it’s an interesting mix of shows, and for both good and for bad, you’ll no doubt be saying to yourself: they don’t make ’em like that anymore.

The Classic TV shows of 1979 are waiting for you — scroll down to see!

1 of 17

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‘Angie’ (1979-80)

Donna Pescow, coming off of the success of Saturday Night Fever two years earlier, stars as Angie Falco, an Italian-American middle class waitress who falls in love with and marries Dr. Brad Benson (Robert Hays), with the comedy coming from the clashing of their respective worlds. Also starring Everybody Loves Raymond‘s Doris Roberts as Angie’s mother, Theresa.

2 of 17

‘Archie Bunker’s Place’ (1979-83)

By the time All in the Family had reached its final season, the show had gone through quite a change from its original concept, with Rob Reiner and Sally Struthers’ characters having moved out at the end of Season 8, and Jean Stapleton saying she would be leaving at the end of the following year. The final season of the show had an arc toward the end where Carroll O’Connor’s Archie Bunker becomes partner in a neighborhood bar, which would largely be the setting of the spin-off show Archie Bunker’s Place. Jean Stapleton stayed for the first 14 episodes, but then left, the writers deciding the character had died off camera. For the rest of its run, the focus would be on Archie, the bar and his niece, Stephanie Mills (Danielle Brisebois), who had moved in with him and Edith.

3 of 17

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‘Benson’ (1979-86)

Robert Guillaume’s Benson DuBois, who was introduced to TV audiences on the sitcom Soap, is spun off into this series in which Benson finds himself appointed director of household affairs for the governor. But as the show goes on, he is promoted to state budget director, followed by lieutenant governor and, as the series was ending, the possibility of governor.

4 of 17

‘Buck Rogers in the 25th Century’ (1979-81)

Following 500 years in suspended animation, 20th Century astronaut William “Buck” Rogers is awakened to a new Earth where he gets involved with a variety of adventures to save humanity in a future world. Very campy show that is too much of a slave to its era (including disco and R2D2 type robots in the form of Twiki). Erin Gray costars as Colonel Wilma Deering. From the producers and visual effects team of the original Battlestar Galactica.

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‘Carol Burnett and Company’ (1979)

A year after The Carol Burnett Show went off the air, Carol and costar Tim Conway were waxing nostalgic about the show and came up with the idea for a four-episode summer reprisal. CBS couldn’t fit it into their schedule, but ABC did. The format was essentially the same, with Vicki Lawrence joining Carol and Tim, though Harvey Korman, unfortunately, wasn’t available.

6 of 17

‘Delta House’ (1979)

More or less a spin-off to the 1978 movie hit, National Lampoon’s Animal House. Basically, it’s the same idea: college kids acting crazy, though their act had to be cleaned up considerably for television. John Vernon and Stephen Furst returned in their film roles of, respectively, Dean Wormer and Flounder. One of the newcomers, playing “The Bombshell,” Michelle Pfeiffer, whose brief time on the show brought her to the attention of Hollywood.

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‘The Dukes of Hazzard’ (1979-85)

The light-hearted adventures of the good ol’ Duke cousins, Bo, Luke and Daisy (respectively John Schneider, Tom Wopat and Catherine Bach), who are fighting for the residents of Hazzard County, Georgia (don’t look for it on the map) against the corrupt sheriff’s department. They’re aided in no small way by their ’69 Dodge Charger, the General Lee. The show ran for seven seasons from 1979-85. A recast movie version was released in 2005.

8 of 17

‘The Facts of Life’ (1979-88)

This spin-off from Diff’rent Strokes took Charlotte Rae’s housekeeper Edna Garrett and transplanted her to the Eastland School (eventually Eastland Academy), a private all-girls school in upstate New York, where she serves as housemother at a dormitory. In the first couple of seasons, there was a bit of a cast shake-up with the girls, eventually settling on the wealthy and spoiled Blair Warner (Lisa Whelchel), the humorous Natalie Green (Mindy Cohn), the youngest among them, Dorothy “Tootie” Ramsey (Kim Fields) and, in season two, tomboy Jo Polniaczek (Nancy McKeon). Lost in the mix, among others, was ’80s movie sweetheart Molly Ringwald. The premise changed more over the years, but the show always kept its heart, which is why it lasted as long as it did.

9 of 17

‘Hart to Hart’ (1979-84)

Jonathan and Jennifer Hart (Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers) were rich, stylish and supersleuths. Jonathan, a self-made millionaire and head of the Hart Industries conglomerate, and Jennifer, an internationally known freelance journalist, roamed the world to solve crimes. The show was created by Tom Mankiewicz, the writer of several James Bond films and Superman: The Movie.

10 of 17

‘Hello, Larry’ (1979-80)

McLean Stevenson, who had appeared on 33 episodes of The Doris Day Show between 1969 and 1971, found himself hired on to the TV version of MASH as Lt. Colonel Henry Blake. During the third season — having a need to be number one on a show rather than a costar (as Loretta Swit informed us on our Classic TV podcast) — he asked to be released from his contract and was. As a result, Henry Blake was killed — shot down over the Sea of Japan on his way home — and McLean went on to his own shows, none of which were successful. The McLean Stevenson Show and In the Beginning led to Hello, Larry, which didn’t fare much better. In the latter, he plays Larry Alder, a 44-year-old divorcee raising two teenage daughters while hosting a call-in psychology radio show. He might have been better off staying with MASH.

11 of 17

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‘Knots Landing’ (1979-93)

This show began as a spin-off to Dallas with the focus on four married couples who live in a cul-de-sac in a Los Angeles suburb. But by the end, as Wikipedia notes, “Storylines had included rape, murder, kidnapping, assassinations, drug smuggling, corporate intrigue and criminal investigations.” The show lasted 14 seasons and was, at the time, the longest running drama behind Gunsmoke and Bonanza. Now that’s how you do a spin-off!

12 of 17

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‘The Mary Tyler Moore Hour’ (1979)

Following The Mary Tyler Moore Show, the actress tried her hand at variety shows, including this one which has her starring as the host of a variety TV show attempting to put together a variety show on a weekly basis. It only lasted 11 episodes in all, despite the fact it costarred Michael Keaton and David Letterman. Herbie J Pilato, author of Mary: The Mary Tyler Moore Story, explained to us in an exclusive interview, “When The Dick Van Dyke Show was cancelled, she wanted to distance herself from it. And then after The Mary Tyler Moore Show ended, she wanted to distance herself from that. She tried the variety shows, which was another bomb, largely because Carol Burnett had taken the genre to perfection, but the variety show in general was ending.”

13 of 17

‘Mrs. Columbo’ aka ‘Kate Loves a Mystery’ (1979-80)

No one can quite explain where this ill-advised spin-off to Peter Falk’s Columbo came from, beyond the fact that it was an attempt to ride on the trench coat of that show’s success. The concept is that Kate Columbo (renamed Kate Callahan when the show was retitled Kate Loves a Mystery), following a divorce from her husband, is a news reporter who, while raising her daughter, attempts to solve crimes. It lasted 13 episodes. Kate Mulgrew (Captain Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager) stars as the title character.

14 of 17

‘The Ropers’ (1979-80)

After selling their Three’s Company apartment building, Stanley and Helen Roper (Norman Fell and Audra Lindley) move to Cheviot Hills. There Helen tries to fit in, Stanley makes no effort to do so and everything becomes a disaster. Jeffrey Tambor played their next door neighbor, Jeffrey P. Brookes III. The show had a two season run. Fell and Lindley attempted to come back to the original series, but Don Knotts had been cast as the new owner and the producers wouldn’t change the situation.

15 of 17

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‘Salvage 1’ (1979)

After the enormous success of The Andy Griffith Show, Andy had a hard time finding another successful series. In this one he plays Harry Broderick, the owner of Jettison Scrap and Salvage Co. Specializing in reclaiming trash and junk, he comes up with a plan to recover various pieces of equipment left on the surface of the moon during the Apollo space program and sell it. Assisting is Joel Higgins as former astronaut Addison “Skip” Carmichael and Trish Stewart as NASA fuel expert Melanie “Mel” Slozer. The success of the 1979 pilot led to the production of 18 additional episodes.

16 of 17

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‘Supertrain’ (1979)

Take The Love Boat and transport it to a nuclear-powered train with the same sort of amenities as a cruise ship, and you’ll have an idea of what this fiasco was about. Each week guest stars would take a ride on the train and interact with the show’s main cast. At the time, it was the most expensive series ever produced for television.

17 of 17

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‘Trapper John, M.D.’ (1979-86)

While this show was a success in its own right, with Bonanza‘s Pernell Roberts in the title role, it’s really difficult to believe that this is supposed to be the same character that Wayne Rogers played on MASH, only 28 years later. Still, as a drama — with Trapper leading a team of surgeons — it worked.

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